Last week Leslie Wiggins of Lux Venit and I began a month-long series on the 31 chapters of John Piper's book The Purifying Power of Living By Faith in Future Grace, better known as Future Grace. We now move on to Part 2, "Free and Future Grace," beginning with Chapter 4, "The Life That's Left Is Future Grace."
One Life to Live
All of us have only one life to live, and I'm not talking about the ABC soap opera. Furthermore, as John Piper says at the outset of Chapter 4, the only life we have left to live is future life. As such, all promises of God are future promises, and all expectations of God are future expectations. The Christian life is lived in the current moment, but as every future moment becomes the present moment, God's future grace promised becomes present grace endued. And that is a splendid promise in itself.
However, many of us live in the present moment as though present grace endued cannot strengthen, never mind future grace promised. This Piper answers with a startling statement: "You can't be a Christian without faith in future grace." He clarifies: "Our standing as Christians is as secure as God's supply of future grace," meaning that the same faith that justifies both sanctifies us and empowers us to put one foot in front of the other. For support, Piper turns to the New Testament example of the Church in Macedonia, who gave freely to the poor of the Church in Jerusalem not out of wealth, but despite extreme poverty. How did they know that God would provide for them once they turned over their meagre riches to support the Church in Jerusalem? Only faith. And yet, full of faith. Faith is sometimes all we have, but faith is all we need.
How often do we place faith in God contingently? "I will trust you, Lord, when you put enough money in my bank account to stop me worrying." Like Gideon, we lay out our fleeces, when we should be prostrating ourselves on our faces! But Macedonian, expectant faith is not arrogant, it is confident:
We are gathered together because of the grace of our God and Father, visited upon us through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and made our possession through the ministry of the Word. Amen.
All that we do flows from His grace; we deserve nothing through what we have done in preparation, or anything we have done as a result of grace...
We are here in Jesus' name, not in yours, and not in ours. We are here because He is good, not because you are, and not because we are. We are here because He is the Lord, and we are not. Bow down to Him now. (from Douglas Wilson's Exhortations)
Conscious of Christ as their supreme possession, the Macedonians confidently, faithfully, and humbly disposed of their possessions to provide for the temporal needs of the Jerusalem Church. The lesson here is that we are grace to others when we are nourished by the grace of God through His Word. In other words (the Apostle Paul's words, actually), grace be to us today, and grace be with us tomorrow. Amen.
Leslie has posted what she has learned in Chapter 4 here.
